


It never hurts to give thanks to the broken bones you had to use to build your ladder

by Elsinore_and_Inverness



Series: It never hurts to give thanks (Adora and Moist series) [1]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Breakfast, F/M, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Government employment, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Making Money, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 18:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20783282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsinore_and_Inverness/pseuds/Elsinore_and_Inverness
Summary: Sometimes being in charge of multiple things at once is hard on the nerves. Sometimes someone’s there to help.“Moist considered the ocean of mundane, managerial tasks that lay before him and a wave of dread washed over him. Then came an eddy of guilt remembering he was here with Spike which ought to be enough to make him feel like the luckiest person on the Disc.”





	It never hurts to give thanks to the broken bones you had to use to build your ladder

**Author's Note:**

> Gosh, these two are so much softer in the books than they are in the film
> 
> Title is from "Younger" from the Mountain Goats' "In League With Dragons"

Moist closed his eyes. He supposed the effort of maintaining the tireless, charismatic, but thankfully no longer capital-r Respectable persona of an efficient, clever, and likable public official was taking a toll on his young body. Hubert’s Igor had told him he still had tendinitis in his ankles and possibly other joints from injuries in his early days in government employment, and, while he knew it was probably secondhand smoke that made his breath shorter than it was, he’d decided to blame the dust and unhealthy sleeping conditions he’d endured months ago. But these persistent aches had nothing on the nightmares and fears of slipping away from cool rationality that made him chase after experiences that made him feel keen and sharp and too tired to worry.

He remembered his last meeting with Lord Vetinari. “How am I expected to do this much all at once?” he’d asked. “I don’t know how you’re expected to either, but you seem to be better off doing more than doing less” had been the reply.

He was beginning to suspect that the patrician actually cared about his well-being. It was a terrifying thought.

Adora Belle Dearheart watched her fiancé move a piece of bacon that had fallen out of his sandwich around his plate. 

Adora had cooked some interesting blood sausages and dishes made out of sheep organs and didn’t understand his lack of enthusiasm or the way the smell made him look vaguely like he was suffering. It wasn’t as if she had burned them, and there was nothing stopping him from making his own breakfast, except perhaps that Gladys had already given him a bacon sandwich... Which he had, with some effort, taken apart and now appeared to be attempting to to scrape the grease off the millimeters thick bread.

He didn’t know how to fully explain the trouble he was having with meat, especially meat where you could still tell what part of the animal it came from, since Adora didn’t seem to have any of the same hang-ups, but his imagination was suggesting to him images he would rather not see. 

Miss Dearheart had had a lot on her mind lately and had been brushing off Moist’s suggestions of having a meal together, but he had told her at the bank they only catered to dogs and she had noticed his stomach growling last night when they were cuddled up together.

He was too embarrassed to ask for something vegetarian.

Moist considered the ocean of mundane, managerial tasks that lay before him and a wave of dread washed over him. Then came an eddy of guilt remembering he was here with Spike which ought to be enough to make him feel like the luckiest person on the Disc. 

He squeezed his eyes shut again. 

“Tell me I’m awful and you’re disgusted with me.”

Adora looked at him, her intense gaze quizzical.

“It’ll make me feel better.”

“Oh sunshine,” she said. Her voice was low and soft with concern. She brushed his mousy hair back from his forehead and he melted under her touch. 

He bit back the impulse to think _I don’t deserve this. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me I’m nothing. That I’m a fraud and I can’t reset the balance to a net positive. _

Adora was used to having to navigate different ways of thinking, to figure out ways around possible miscommunications, but she and Moist were generally on the same page. 

“You’re really hurting, aren’t you?” 

“Have you been having nightmares?” he asked.

“Not lately.”

“I keep falling. Keep hearing things.”

“Not when you’re awake?”

“No.” 

Moist von Lipwig was neither a small man nor a large man. An observant observer would note that he was on the average side of average. In her omnipresent devastatingly sharp heels, Adora was a bit taller than him. She pulled him over to her side of the bench and kissed his forehead.

She’d had a sense since the beginning, but in recent weeks she was realizing properly just how fragile her fiancé really was.

Adora carded her fingers through his hair and he shivered pleasantly. The ends of his hair that stuck out of his hat were bleached gold from the sun. There was also a tan line from the narrow gap between his velvet neck stock and his shirt. It was rather rakish in a modest sort of way* when he was fully dressed, but in his nightshirt it looked a bit silly.

“I don’t think I realized how lonely I was,” Moist said, “I barely even had friends.” He cuddled up to Adora. She felt stronger than him. More wiry. She certainly knew more ways to kill a man, which wasn’t saying much because he didn’t know any ways to kill a man— Banshees on the other hand—

He wondered how she was comfortable in a wool dress so tight.

“I’ve had years like that,” she said. She stroked his hair thoughtfully for a while longer. She would be wanting a cigarette soon. “I think the stress is getting to you, sunshine and you might have to slow down. This isn’t mythology.” 

“Says who?”

“Says the sheer volume of paperwork on your desk. Do you think Vetinari might give you some time off?”

“That’d make it worse.” He snuggled closer, squishing his cheek into her shoulder.

“Even if it was with me?”

Moist stopped squirming. “Oh... Oh you mean, like— Like going on holiday.”

“You were crying out in the middle of the night,” she said matter-of-factly.

“It’s a bit embarrassing.” 

Adora lit a cigarette, propping Moist up with her hand so she wouldn’t blow smoke in his face. “No it’s not.”

She shifted the shoulder of his nightshirt and kissed the long scar on his arm. He thought he felt smoke on his skin before he felt her lips.

Adora thought about the time a couple days ago that the shiny gold fabric of Moist’s gold suit had stuck a patch of glue where some of the wallpaper had peeled up. He’d been leaning against the wall and when he went to move he’d realized it was stuck. The suit was essentially a stage costume, light and delicate but not quite as delicate as the gold shine on the surface. But Moist was good with textiles. Paper and fabric were on the same sliding scale, especially when it came to official documents and money. He carefully peeled the material off the wall, resulting in an almost imperceptible reduction in glitter. People were a bit like that. Breakable, but surprisingly resilient if handled with care.

*She didn’t suspect he had learned to dress like that from her, she knew because he had told her multiple times


End file.
